As it gets more funding from the federal government and less from Sacramento, UC Berkeley is effectively morphing from a state university into a federal university, according to Chancellor Robert Birgeneau.

Birgeneau said this week that the transformation will "require us to think through what our role is both in the state and nationally."

He first made the compelling case for applying the federal label to California's most famous public university at a conference organized by the Travers Program in Ethics and Accountability on the Berkeley campus earlier this month.

When he became chancellor more than six years ago, he explained, the largest chunk of funding - about $450 million - came from the state. Federal research funding totaled about $300 million. Student fees brought in about $150 million, with philanthropy providing slightly less. The campus' endowment generated about $100 million to $120 million.

By this year, the funding breakdown for Berkeley had changed completely. Federal research funds bring in $500 million. Student fees yield $315 million and will increase to $340 million next year. Private philanthropy yields about the same amount.

And then there is state support, which is down to $300 million this year and about $225 million during the coming academic year, after the cuts proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown have been made. That would be half of what the university received from the state when Birgeneau came to Berkeley in 2004, and could go even lower if the special election Brown wants to call doesn't make it on to the ballot or is rejected by voters.

Birgeneau said he had not fully fleshed out his concept of what it means to be an increasingly federally supported university. But, he said, "the reality is that with the progressive disinvestment in higher education by the state, the state is becoming a tertiary player."